Creating Uneven Surfaces

[demagogue]

For more radical uneven surfaces, the two techniques I've seen are:

 

1. have the streets tiered at different levels, leave a gap at the stair-step connection, and connect the two levels with patches.

 

2. If you look at Midnight at Murkbell, Purah used massive, thin 10-side pyramidal brushes or sections (like a 1/4 mile radius, but like 5-10 meters high, with the top usually buried in some building or beyond the map edge & cut off) to put the streets on rolling hills, usually either overlapping, or with a straight surface between them, or cut off (e.g., at a canal), and it ends up looking really good for uneven urban geometry.

[DeTeEff]

For more radical uneven surfaces, the two techniques I've seen are:

 

1. have the streets tiered at different levels, leave a gap at the stair-step connection, and connect the two levels with patches.

 

2. If you look at Midnight at Murkbell, Purah used massive, thin 10-side pyramidal brushes or sections (like a 1/4 mile radius, but like 5-10 meters high, with the top usually buried in some building or beyond the map edge & cut off) to put the streets on rolling hills, usually either overlapping, or with a straight surface between them, or cut off (e.g., at a canal), and it ends up looking really good for uneven urban geometry.

 

I don't get this really. In the first example, do you mean that you create brush slivers in the road's direction and then smooth out the joints with patches? So it's like a dirt road with two sunken parts where the wheels have moved and a slightly higher strip in the middle?

 

And the second means that the ground level of the city consists of several, flattened half spheres and the city is then built on that?

 

I'm currently working on my city section and would like every advise I can get

Edited January 5, 2012 by Fieldmedic

[demagogue]

I don't get this really. In the first example, do you mean that you create brush slivers in the road's direction and then smooth out the joints with patches? So it's like a dirt road with two sunken parts where the wheels have moved and a slightly higher strip in the middle?

 

Well that's another good technique, some FMs have done it and it looks good, but not what I was talking about. I was talking about large-scale unevenness.

 

I meant like build an entire street with brushes as normal, then the next street down you build that entire street as normal but 5 meters lower, so there's a giant stair-step between the two levels. Then you use big sloping patches to connect the two levels so it looks like a big slope down over that stretch. It's a way to get big-scale unevenness that's still relatively easy to plan, build, and visportal. This is what I did in my FM.

 

And the second means that the ground level of the city consists of several, flattened half spheres and the city is then built on that?

 

Essentially yes, in principle. It ends up looking pretty good to see the buildings built going down the slopes. It's also good for forest or countryside layouts. The best thing I can say is to open Midnight at Murkbell in Dromed and look around. We need to think about the best way to visportal that kind of layout though, since of course it's not a perfect translation from Dromed to DR, but has to be adapted to it. Maybe the whole thing is made with patches (or imported from a modeling application) over caulk brushes.

[DeTeEff]

I meant like build an entire street with brushes as normal, then the next street down you build that entire street as normal but 5 meters lower, so there's a giant stair-step between the two levels. Then you use big sloping patches to connect the two levels so it looks like a big slope down over that stretch. It's a way to get big-scale unevenness that's still relatively easy to plan, build, and visportal. This is what I did in my FM.

 

Ahh, I see...but that style of workflow requires most of the street networks to be constructed first, and then later add the houses I guess?

 

EDIT:

Never mind, as always to achieve the best result one should plan the whole layout and then just add box houses as placeholders and mark where the doors/windows should go...

It's just that I'm always too eager to see the finished result and texture the houses and add doors and decore and plan "as I go"...

 

 

And that's a big reason to why my missions are generally poor...

 

Edited January 6, 2012 by Fieldmedic

[Baddcog]

Well, Dromed was limited to brushes, so you had to use pyramids, cylinders and dodyhyracons to mimick natural shapes.

 

But it was good about letting you throw in a huge circumference pyramid I like that in to uneven streets. So what the player sees is only just a bump (1/10) of the pyramid. And with the timing system .You could later just carve an air cube right into overlapping solids and not worry about it.

 

But that would just be messy in DR. But making a patch that fit the area that gives the same basic shape (but smoother) is easy to do.

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If you want to look at more complicated uneven natural terrain you can look at my mission The Rift. It may not be all my best examples so far but there are a variety of uses. Probably 3/4 of the map is patchwork. Streets, caves, grassy hill, mines... Just select the patch, click ctrl-V and look at how i moved the verts around.